Legendary music executive Jason Flom has led a double life for the past two decades.

In one, he discovers multi-platinum artists like Katy Perry and Lorde. In another, he helps everyday people like Steven Lennon — and changes their lives by freeing them from prison.

"Serendipity is a big part of my story," he says. "And synchronicity."

In 1993, Flom happened to pick up a copy of the New York Post (The Times was sold out) and read a story that would lead him to become an "obsessive advocate" for first offenders — and for people imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit at all.

"The headline was something like, 'Cuomo Denies Ferraro Bid for Drug Dealer Parole' or something like that," Flom tells me. "And I was like, wow, this story has two things that fascinate me — drugs and prison. Perfect, right?"

A man named Steven Lennon had been sentenced to 15 years to life for a non-violent, first-offense cocaine possession charge in New York State, and he was being held at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. Lennon's mother, Shirley, had been trying to get clemency from Gov. Mario Cuomo for her son, who had already served eight years. He had an otherwise clean record, completed college in prison and had letters of support from various people. Geraldine Ferraro — an attorney best known for being the first female vice presidential candidate for a major political party — took up the case.

I'm just telling you, this story's driving me nuts. I gotta do something.

But Cuomo declined the clemency request. Flom, not knowing anything about mandatory sentences at the time, called Shirley Lennon to see if he could help.

"You probably think I'm some lunatic weirdo from New York City," he told her, "but I'm just telling you, this story's driving me nuts. I gotta do something."

She said they had already exhausted their appeals. They had run out of options. So Flom contacted a defense attorney he knew named Bob Kalina, who represented two of his artists — Stone Temple Pilots and Skid Row — when they would get into trouble.

"I had him on speed dial," Flom says.

Kalina told him it was hopeless, and that there were thousands of cases just like Lennon's. But after reading the court transcripts and talking to Shirley Lennon, he called Flom months later and said he'd found a minor loophole. They got a hearing, flew upstate "like the fucking Avengers, that's what it felt like," Flom says, and they ultimately won the case.

He realized, in that moment, that he could do what he'd always wanted to do: help people who were, essentially, helpless.

"That was transformative. That led to me finding out … about this organization called Families Against Mandatory Minimums. I contacted them, joined their board, and that led me to the various organizations that I've been involved with for so long," he says.

Flom, now 55, is a founding board member of the Innocence Project, and serves on the boards of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the Legal Action Center, the Drug Policy Alliance, the NYU Prison Education Program and VETPAW. He worked directly with President Bill Clinton to grant clemency to 17 prisoners in 2000, helped establish the first bail fund with the Bronx Defenders, and worked behind-the-scenes in the crack cocaine mandatory minimum rollback, among other efforts.

Record producer and activist Russell Simmons said of Flom at one of his galas: "When we went to work on the Rockefeller drug laws, it was Jason that was the catalyst behind it ... He brought a lot of people together, and he helped us achieve unimaginable things. He’s not just a Renaissance Man in music. He is a true, beautiful spirit, a giving spirit, and I love him dearly for his gift to humanity."

Now, Flom is launching a new podcast on Tuesday, Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom, in which he interviews exonerees, gives them a platform to go into greater detail with their stories, and talks to experts about the science that freed them.

And he wants you along for the ride.

The doormat outside Flom's apartment on the 67th floor of a Midtown Manhattan highrise stands out with big, black letters: "OH SHIT NOT YOU AGAIN."

Inside, floor-to-ceiling windows let the natural light flood in, even on a foggy Friday afternoon, with views of the Hudson River to the west and Central Park to the north. Colorful art hangs on the walls: a framed poster of Darth Vader standing in the ocean, filling a Brita filter; an enlarged version of an iconic Marilyn Monroe photo in pink hues; a series of newspaper clippings about LGBTQ rights, set behind dozens of repurposed eyeglass lenses. Kitschy art featuring Lifesavers and Brillo flanks each end of the living room couch, where Flom sits beneath a large painting that says, "EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE AMAZING."

Lulu, Flom's four-year-old English bulldog, barks and walks around the apartment like she owns it.

"When I was a kid, I wanted to be a rock star, if you want to go back that far," Flom says after I ask him about how he entered the music industry. He peers at me behind dark tortoise glasses, wearing a black Guns N' Roses T-shirt with strategically cut holes underneath a black blazer.

"My dad was legendary corporate lawyer Joe Flom, and my mother graduated Cornell when she was 18," he says. "So, the idea that I wanted to go to college wasn't big. I was basically wearing my guitar around all day, every day, and just practicing a lot and performing a little."

Flom's late father, a partner at what is now Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (one of the country's largest law firms), had made a deal with him: become a rockstar within one year, or go to college. His mom vetoed the deal immediately, saying he either needed to go to school or get a job. So his dad made a few phone calls and got him a job interview at Warner Communications.

"I smoked two joints, went to the interview, sat down in the chair, and this guy David Horowitz, who was sort of head of the Music Group … he took one look at me and said, 'You're going to work at Atlantic Records,'" he says.

His first day on the job, he was sent out on the streets with double-sided tape, a roll of Led Zeppelin posters and a ladder, replacing displays and, he says, smoking a lot of weed. He fell in love with the business immediately.

It was around that time, in the late '70s, that the first Van Halen record came out. Flom then realized playing guitar wasn't for him.

"I was just too intimidated, and I said, 'Fuck it.' I wanted to be the best at something. And I was never going to be the best guitar player. So, that's how it started."

Lorde and Flom.

Courtesy of Jason Flom

Katy Perry and Flom at the 2009 Grammy Salute to Industry Icons on Feb. 7, 2009.

Rick Diamond/WireImage/Getty Images

Flom and Kid Rock.

Courtesy of Jason Flom

Flom and Jared Leto.

Courtesy of Jason Flom

If his goal really was to become the best at something, finding popular music acts might just be it. By the time he became chairman and CEO of Atlantic Records nearly 25 years later, he had discovered and developed artists including Skid Row, Tori Amos, Jewel, Kid Rock, Matchbox 20, The Corrs, Hayley Williams, Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Sugar Ray. After he was named chairman and CEO of Virgin Records in 2006, he discovered and signed Katy Perry. Two years later, he was appointed chairman and CEO of Capitol Music Group, and oversaw the careers of artists like Coldplay and Lenny Kravitz.

In 2009, Flom "reclaimed" Lava Records, which he had launched in 1995 as a joint venture with Atlantic Records, and formed a partnership with Republic Records, signing artists like Lorde and Jessie J.

Flom's successful career as a record executive has been propelled by years of experience and attracting talent. Getting involved in wrongful conviction and exoneration, however, was much more by chance.

He's one of the few people who can talk about Katy Perry and death row in the same breath — and with authority on both.

The United States has the largest prison population and the fastest rate of incarceration in the world. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly 6.9 million people were in the criminal justice system (including jail, prison, probation and parole) by the end of 2014, and 2.2 million people were in prison or local jails. Incarceration rates disproportionately impact people of color, especially in terms of drug-related offenses, despite the fact that drug use and sales are comparable across race and ethnicity.

A lot of Flom's philanthropic work over the years has focused on drug laws, such as working to eliminate mandatory sentencing and decriminalize drugs "that shouldn't be illegal," according to him.

"That's sort of my work with Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which doesn't only focus on drug laws, but ... most of the mandatory sentencing laws are drug laws," he says. Many of those affected by such laws are low-risk, nonviolent first offenders.

Flom also works with the Drug Policy Alliance, the Bronx Defenders, the NYU Prison Education Program and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition in Los Angeles. Perhaps most notable is his work with the Innocence Project, where he started the Life After Exoneration program and the Innocence Network Conference, helping exonerees reintegrate into society. In 2011, he donated $1 million to the Innocence Project to establish a senior litigation position in honor of his father. The man who has that position — Chris Fabricant — works with his team to take individual cases and use them as examples to drive systemic change.

"It's all under the umbrella of mass incarceration, which is a uniquely American and terrible problem," Flom says. "The good thing is that there's growing awareness that it needs to be fixed."

Courtesy of Jason Flom

Courtesy of Jason Flom

Part of that growing awareness coincides with clemencies, another area in which Flom has made a difference. In 2000, he not only got the chance to attend a fundraising dinner hosted by President Bill Clinton — he finagled his way into sitting across from him to talk about clemencies.

"Finally, I get him in a conversation about the drug laws. And I get him to admit they were wrong. They are wrong," Flom says, referencing Clinton's 1994 crime bill, which the former president has said made mass incarceration worse.

Flom says Clinton told him, "Listen, if somebody breaks the law, they should go to jail. But they shouldn't spend the best years of their life there."

He handed Clinton a personal letter from one of the five people he granted clemency only a month earlier.

Mr. President, what you did for these five people is heroic. But I know hundreds of other cases just as bad as those.

"I said, 'Mr. President, what you did for these five people is heroic. But I know hundreds of other cases just as bad as those.' And he says, 'You get them to me, and I'll sign them.'"

Flom went through Clinton aides and the Department of Justice to submit requests through the standard process, working with organizations to find 25 cases that fit the criteria, and leveraging personal connections to make sure the submissions found their way to the president. In the end, Clinton granted 17 of them.

During the Obama administration, Flom hasn't worked directly with the president, but he has worked with the Clemency Project 2014 and had conversations with the White House on what he can do to help. In April, he published an open letter in Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Hits, calling for lawyers to take a webinar from National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on how to file clemency petitions.

It's certainly a time of increased awareness and change, with record numbers of exonerations, and podcasts and shows like Serial and Making a Murderer shedding light on the criminal justice system in ways the general public hasn't experienced before.

For Flom, starting the Wrongful Conviction podcast was the logical next step. In each one-hour episode, Flom talks to a different exoneree about their stories, while addressing broader issues of — and solutions to — mass incarceration.

The first episode features Raymond Santana, who was wrongly convicted at age 14 as part of the Central Park Five, teenagers accused of raping a jogger in New York’s Central Park in 1989. Santana served 12 years before DNA evidence matched to the real perpetrator, Matias Reyes, exonerated him. The case has been brought up in the media this year due to the presidential election, reminding the public that GOP candidate Donald Trump once called for the five teens' executions in a 1989 ad that many people called racially motivated.

Santana tells me via email that the Innocence Project has been very helpful getting the word out about their story. As a result, they teamed up long ago to "fight against injustice."

He met Flom at an Innocence Project event, and says it was only a matter of time before they banded together, too.

"What Jason is doing is fighting injustice from a different angle," Santana says. "He is providing exonerees with a platform to tell their stories, also giving them an opportunity to reach a bigger audience to bring more awareness about false convictions."

Flom says they chose Santana to be the first episode because he did a good job of discussing an issue that is of particular interest to the public: false confessions.

"Especially on the heels of Making a Murderer, this is a very hard thing for most people to understand. Why the fuck would anybody confess to something they didn't do?" Flom says.

Therein lies the other aspect of the podcast — discussing the science and psychology behind wrongful convictions and exonerations. That includes DNA, hair analysis, bite marks, fingerprints and even the dispute over shaken baby syndrome.

"Everybody that's listening is a potential juror," Flom says. "So, if one person that's listening gets put on a trial, and takes a more educated, more skeptical view of what's happening in front of them, and that leads to one person not getting wrongfully convicted — and maybe one right person being convicted — that's a success. That's worth all my time."

When I ask Flom if it was ever hard for people to take him seriously — the man responsible for Kid Rock trying to help wrongfully convicted people — he says they never showed it to his face, if so. In fact, he thinks his day job gives him a step up in approaching issues of wrongful conviction and mass incarceration.

"You don't see me coming as easily," he says, as Lulu snores on the floor beside him. "I can come in under the guise of a record guy, and then change clothes — or not."

He fully embraces the duality of his life, and, despite his success in both entertainment and social justice, he acts relatively down to earth when talking about it.

"There's a great line in a Kid Rock song where he says, 'I've been around, seen some things, I've slept in dumpsters, got high with kings.' That's kind of like my life. I feel like that. I feel I move relatively easily from talking to the president to talking to guys in prison," he says.

For now, he's focused on the Wrongful Conviction podcast, and trying to amass as much attention to the issue as possible.

"I'm fucking thrilled to be a part of it … And I think it's cathartic for them, in some ways, to tell their story. Not that it's the only chance they have," he says. "But hopefully it'll reach the right audience."

You can find Wrongful Conviction on iTunes and on the reVolver podcasts website. Flom will be donating $1 to the Innocence Project for every free download, up to $1 million.